


The Ties That Bind Us

by padfootfreak14



Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23670898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padfootfreak14/pseuds/padfootfreak14
Summary: First of all, I want you to know, I’m currently in the hospital for my heart problems and just got out of surgery earlier today. I have been reading all of your imagines (along with a lot others) but I want to say thank you for making me smile and for helping me pass my time in here 💕 anyways, could I request? Like the reader and Owen are engaged and she gets upset and ignores him when he kisses Claire but she gets really hurt later on and they make up cause they think she’ll die 💕 thank you7/22/15Definitely not fluffy. Probably won’t make anyone smile, fluffs to follow.
Relationships: Owen Grady/Reader
Kudos: 7





	The Ties That Bind Us

If you had one more person ask you how excited you were to be engaged you were going to feed them to Owen’s raptors. Use something with a bit more brain power than a pig to see how well the girls could hunt. Like honestly, these people badgered you about it as if there was any other acceptable answer. You’d already had to warn Owen that you may have gotten irritated of the question and told a few people that you weren’t really thrilled about it but the ring was pretty and you were about out of options. He thought it was hilarious, but also said you weren’t allowed to use people to test the girls.  
Realistically, of course you were excited to be engaged. The thrill had calmed down a little since Owen proposed but you were still plenty excited. At the same time you had a ton of other work that took priority for your attention. But the ring was beautiful and the proposal, while not as sweet as he’d meant it to be thanks to his wonderfully unpredictable dinosaurs, was still perfect enough that it didn’t fail to bring a smile to your face. Just as realistically, you weren’t holding your breath on a wedding any time soon, not unless you convinced Owen to drop his demands that you have an actual wedding.  
Yes, an actual planned wedding would be nice. Neither of you had much in way of family at least that would be willing to make an appearance, so it would just be your small group of friends but you could see the appeal in it. The pragmatic side of you also chose to consider how incredibly busy you both were. It left you very little time to plan anything, even a very small wedding. The closest you got was because Barry had made a joke that you and Owen spent so much time at the paddock that you might as well just get married there. He didn’t expect that it would make the two of you consider it.  
Whenever you did have free time it either ended up that something or someone distracted you or just that something came up. More than that, you had a hard time focusing on something happy and incredibly important when that son of a bitch Hoskins was breathing down everyone’s necks. You were not so patiently waiting for the day that Owen knocked the shit out of him. He was absolutely your least favorite person on the entire island, and there were some real winners. The man was a self-obsessed pig and he made your skin crawl.  
With the comments he made when it was first publicly known that you and Owen were together, you outright refused to wear your engagement ring anywhere you thought Hoskins might appear. It was better for everyone involved that no one had to hear what disgusting things would come out of his mouth and by everyone you meant that if Owen heard him say anything else he’d probably murder him. It was bad enough dealing with the stupidity that came from him every time he was near. Any more though, you were ready to break Owen’s rule about feeding people to the girls and let then have at Hoskins, they hated him in the first place.  
For whatever reason, as if life at the paddock wasn’t headache enough, Hoskins decided today that since the girls had listened to Owen, one of the only times they’d decided to listen to him, that clearly these were trained animals! He wanted to field test them even, and he was out of his god damn mind. All the money in the world couldn’t convince either of you to let the girls out of their paddock. They rarely listened in the paddock, give them some freedom and bond or not they would kill all of you in a heartbeat. Hoskins had the nerve to try and act like using raptors would be some great gift to the army, decrease human casualties and send in raptors. Expect those raptors to eat the enemies. He saw what he wanted to. Animals that had listened to commands, not insanely intelligent killing machines that felt like playing nice for the day.  
Barry said it better than you could have. The first hint of progress and the first thing Hoskins wanted to do was turn them in to weapons. He looked down at the girls as if they were gifts to him but he didn’t care to notice the way Blue looked up at him as if you and Owen were bringing her a nice meaty gift as a better reward for their performance than some rodents. Finally you and Barry reached the point that you couldn’t hear any more of this nonsense and walked off laughing, leaving Hoskins to wonder what you found so funny and Owen to fend for himself. You were glad that you got away from him before you had to hear the pile of shit he had to spew next or you’d have pushed him in the paddock.  
It was just your luck that you would escape one idiot to get stuck with another. You felt concern rise up the minute you watched the new kid leaning over the rails with the catch stick to get the loose pig. Never lean over the rails, you didn’t do that even if you had Owen standing right there with you. Just as you grabbed his shirt to pull him back, Charlie rushed in and grabbed the pig, pulling both of you down into the pen and right in front of Blue and Delta. As if the day could’ve gotten any worse, well you could’ve landed like he had but either way you were both about to be eaten. At least this way you weren’t going to die crawling away, just trying to convince the girls to pretty please not eat you.  
You had to hand it to the team, they were really quick to get the stun rifles and be ready to shoot the hell out of the girls. You also had to say that while you were about to be eaten, you didn’t want anyone shooting your girls not that you could do anything about it. You hadn’t even heard the gate open but sure enough suddenly the guards were standing down and Owen was standing between you and the girls. The girls who were still stalking forward, but thankfully edging you back towards the gate. From the corner of your eye you saw Barry drag the kid back under the half opened gate and you were torn between getting on the other side yourself and staying right behind Owen. Owen was in no way torn, a quick hand pushed you towards the gate.  
He’d managed thus far without having his arm ripped off, but telling Barry to close the gate was nothing short of insanity. At the rate the two of you were going you’d be lucky if there was still a wedding to plan by the end of the day. Air finally found its way back to your lungs as Owen rolled under the closing gate and the girls shook off the impact of getting a face full of gate instead of a mouthful of him. From the safety of the cage you could at least appreciate how comically like a grouchy dog Echo seemed as she continued to terrorize the kid. Appreciate it while simultaneously trying not to start hyperventilating and generally flipping out at how terrifying it was being surrounded by the girls in their own territory.  
As if your mood couldn’t drop any worse, the look on Hoskins’ face when he looked at Owen more than did that. Now he just had more reason to think that raptors would listen, just because they hadn’t tried to outright attack Owen until he dove for the closing gate. You were glad for the distraction of making sure the kid got away from the gate and Echo stalking him from the other side of it. You were more relieved once Hoskins was finally out of sight and the boy had limped his way out of the cage entirely.  
“I say we call it an early day and go home.” You nodded in agreement, instantly relaxing as Owen pulled you against him. You were glad that both of you hadn’t been eaten or maimed, half wondering how that had even happened, but glad none the less. Home would be nice, just the two of you and some quite time to decompress. The ride home however was you rampaging about Hoskins being a fucking idiot and how the only thing that would’ve made him more pleased with himself was if Owen had gotten the girls to play fetch. But wait, as far as Hoskins was concerned the pack was a group of boys so hey. Man could you kill a quiet mood with your raging.  
Even then, it wasn’t as if the two of you had much of a chance to relax. Barely enough time to be impressed that Owen was making progress with the pack and to make sure that each other really was okay and in once piece. Just like with trying to plan the damn wedding, every chance you had for free time had to be interrupted by something. By something you meant Claire Dearing and more stupid park bullshit. Okay, so maybe you held a little bit of dislike for her just because she’d gone on a date once with Owen however long ago, but you were getting sick of interruptions and a sick feeling had settled into your stomach when she started talking about the new dinosaur and the enclosure they wanted Owen to take a look at. Never mind the feeling that arose from the way they both acted like you weren’t even there.  
“Look, I’ll go look at their new dinosaur, make sure the paddock is safe and I’ll be back. It’ll be fine.” You didn’t like this, not one bit. Owen didn’t even seem phased as he changed back in to work clothes. He didn’t even seem to realize that you were upset over more than just the fact that he was leaving.  
“Whatever. One of us needs to actually file a report on the incident with the new kid anyway so you have fun with Claire and I’ll be doing our job. I don’t know when I’ll be back so I guess I’ll see you whenever I see you.” He looked far less amused now, good for him. Two could play the ‘act like the other isn’t there’ game. If he cared that much he could come find you when he was done playing fuck around but you weren’t going to sit around waiting for him to get back. You couldn’t just sit there with that bad feeling festering in your gut that going to this paddock was a bad idea. “Claire’s waiting.” You practically snapped as a horn sounded outside.  
You weren’t wrong to think he was pissed. Owen had already been on edge having to save you from the girls and deal with Hoskins earlier. He was hoping for a quiet rest of the afternoon for once so he could get you to sit with him and the two of you could figure out wedding stuff and forget about anything else. So of course there had to be an interruption and now he had you pissed off at him to boot which meant he’d be lucky if you bothered to come home before tonight. If anything you’d wait at the raptor paddock until you figured he’d be in bed and then come home. He tried to reign in his irritation as you turned away when he tried to kiss you, kissing your cheek instead before stomping outside to the waiting car.  
Once Claire had driven off, you got on your bike and rode off to the main park. The ride cleared your head but left you feeling guilty for being so awful with Owen. The two of you could’ve been seriously hurt this morning, you should’ve been tickled pink that your fiancé had saved your life and enjoyed a little free time with him even if it got interrupted. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be back when he was done, there was no need for you to react so harshly about it but you would just have to wait until he got back to apologize. You still couldn’t shake the feeling in your gut so once you’d filed the necessary reports you weaseled your way into the control room to see if you could check on how it was going. Quite possibly the worst idea you’d ever had.  
You should’ve stayed at home and just been irritated, that had to be better than this. Anything had to be better than this, why couldn’t you just be engaged to someone with a brain who waited before he did something stupid. You didn’t know what the hell this Indominus they were talking about was, but Owen was in the god damn enclosure with it. When you did see it, you very nearly fainted. That thing was loose and Owen… You stumbled from the control room, barely making it to the nearest bathroom before you were sick. He had to be okay, you were just overreacting again and he was perfectly fine. You kept telling yourself that as the first sob tore from your throat. You kept trying to call him but he never picked up.  
You had every intention of waiting for Claire to give her a very in person reminder of the cost of this mistake. When you had finally calmed yourself enough to regain some semblance of looking presentable you forced yourself to emerge from the bathroom, trying to turn the agony in your chest in to rage to rip apart anyone that tried to reason with you. You had taken only a few steps back towards control when you stopped dead. You were frozen for only a moment before you broke in to a run, barreling in to Owen so suddenly that you were surprised you hadn’t knocked him over. Not even the overwhelming smell of fuel could peel you off him, no more than the taste could. By the time either of you could force your lips away from the other you were sure you’d garnered more than a few curious looks by anyone who might be passing by.  
“I thought you were dead.” You rasped, burying your face in his chest.  
“I got lucky, the gas confused it enough that it didn’t think I was edible.” He didn’t question how you knew or why you were watching in the first place, he just held you as tightly as he could without hurting you. The first and last thing to flash through his mind when he’d been sure that not even dousing himself in gasoline would keep him alive, was that the last time he’d see you would’ve been the two of you bickering. No ‘I love you’, just you angry at him and that hurt more than anything else could have.  
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” You threatened, lifting your head before the smell ended up making you ill. “What now?”  
“We find out what the hell happened and we don’t leave until we get some damn answers.” You wouldn’t mind beating answers out of someone at this point, but you followed Owen’s lead instead, getting the part of the story you’d missed out on before you’d originally come to control. As the two of you watched the ACU, that same rock formed in the pit of your stomach. You didn’t need to have heard Owen to know how this was going to end. You didn’t want to consider the possibility of what animal they’d spliced into this thing’s genes that it remembered where it’s tracker was but you hoped it wasn’t the first thing that came to your mind.  
Owen’s next course of action after failing to make Claire realize that they needed to evacuate the park was to try and convince you to leave. Not leave the island per say, but go back to the raptor paddock and sit tight with Barry and the girls. You would have none of it, come hell and high water you weren’t leaving his side this time. With his plan after that you were surprised you were only escorted to the lobby by security and not removed from the premises altogether. At least you came to realize that they had shut down everything in the park past the resort, mind you if Indominus could read heat signatures they’d just concentrated them all in one area but it was generally better than nothing at all.  
Now, thanks to the fact that apparently the gyrospheres didn’t have a protocol to return them to the station, you joining Owen and Claire on a rescue mission to retrieve her nephews. You were loath to even thing that the day couldn’t get any worse, because so far every time you thought that it just got progressively worse. Optimistic thinking, you’d find the boys, go back to the park, ACU would kill Indominus and the day would be saved. You definitely wouldn’t even get near that thing.  
And you definitely weren’t kneeling next to one of its victims as it barely clung to life. You had worked with this herd when you first started at the park, watched them hatch and grow and now you had watched one of them take its last breath. Owen seemed to notice something else and you followed him to see what. It had killed the herd, left them dead or dying in a valley that had been their home. Even Claire who you’d heard talk about the animals like they were nothing but revenue was visibly shaken. You needed to find the boys before this thing did. Little did any of you know that it was just as well that you hadn’t gone back to the paddock with everything Hoskins was trying to set in motion.  
Continuing with the luck you’d been having, Indominus had found the boys first. You arrived in time to find a shattered gyrosphere with no sign of anything but a broken tooth and a wrecked cell phone. There wasn’t any blood near the sphere, another dead dinosaur but no blood in or around the sphere itself but there were tracks leading away. The tracks were probably the only thing that was keeping Claire from a complete breakdown. If you would’ve been near her at the waterfall when she started screaming you’d have pushed her off it. You gave it to her for being determined, but what the hell she thought she was accomplishing by changing how she was wearing her shirt you had no idea. Hopefully keeping her between you and Owen would keep her from screwing anything up as you closed in on the boys.  
Once again you managed to miss them by minutes if that, by the time you’d followed the sounds of the jeep they were already gone. You weren’t the only thing the noise had attracted either and Claire was full of surprises today, bursting past you and Owen on the way back out of the old visitors center. You were sure none of you would’ve outrun Indominus, had she not taken off to follow the sound of the helicopter. Ironic that you worked with the raptors every day but watching Indominus burst into the aviary and seeing even one of the pteranodons emerge made your stomach churn. When the helicopter broke through the roof you didn’t waste time staring you ran straight for the trees, anywhere narrow where they couldn’t easily get at you.  
For the next pitiful downward spiral of the day, you finally got back to the park with word that they boys had returned and immediately had to start trying to shoot down these damned flying beasts. Did they even have enough tranquilizers for this? You weren’t sure you’d even had nightmares of containment breaches this awful. As soon as you caught sight of the boys you ran for them, dodging anything you couldn’t drop tranquilizers in to. If Owen ever asked why you didn’t like these things again, you’d use this as an example you thought, trying to careful aim at the pteranodons trying to drown Zara. You weren’t actually sure what they were doing but you needed to get her out of the water. The wake from the mosasaur was just enough that it pushed her high enough so you could grab her hand but by the time you’d pulled her back up to solid ground the boys were gone again.  
You could hear Claire’s voice in the distance as she screamed for her nephews and you caught sight of her near the IMAX, Pterosaur exhibition of course. Definitely done with the irony. You were done with today, done following after kids and trying to make sure nothing grabbed them as they ran. Absolutely done with things trying to eat your god damned fiancé! Fed up with having to dive on concreate to avoid the massive thing falling at you while trying to keep track of the boys and worry about if the dimorphodon had eaten Owen yet or if one of the ACU had shot the thing by now. And of course because nothing today could get better, everything had to just keep going downhill, now you got the very public reminder of why you got so pissed off at your stupid piece of shit bastard will be lucky if he’s still your fiancé. He’d barely touched you all day but now in the middle of a dinosaur catastrophe he had plenty of time to spend kissing Claire.  
Claire, whether for relief at finally finding her nephews or out of common sense, didn’t even look at you. Owen you didn’t care whether or not he looked at you, whether or not he realized that you were standing right there the entire time. Whether he realized that it felt like a huge piece of you had been ripped out when you thought he was dead and somehow he’d just managed to make that healing hole even bigger. Like he’d ripped your heart out, shown it to you like he was going to make it all okay again then threw it away to be mangled some more. By the time he was getting the group to move you were already walking away. This time you weren’t following his lead, you were going to go back to the girls and stay there until this was over. If Indominus showed up, well it showed up.  
You were still close enough to them that you heard Claire and you felt your blood boil. Hoskins was a dead man when you got a hold of him. If he’d harmed even a centimeter of those girls you’d turn him in to their meal. You didn’t particularly want to be joining any of them in this cramped vehicle but you didn’t have time to find one that meant you didn’t have to ride with them.  
Hoskins had turned your beloved paddock in to a military base, you could hear the girls calling before you’d even strode from the vehicle, slamming the door shut behind you. The first attention you paid Owen since the park and your first thought was that he didn’t hit that dirt bag hard enough. Best case scenario if you let the girls loose was they didn’t eat everyone, with the day you’d been having they would kill you all the second the doors were open. You also didn’t have a choice, Claire wouldn’t be a damn bit of useful against Hoskins and his troops, which would have left you, Owen and Barry to try and stop them while protecting Claire and the boys. If Owen stayed back, either they’d deal with him or the girls would rebel and probably be killed. It was a lose-lose situation at this point and you didn’t have much else left to lose. Your engagement ring hung heavy around your neck as you stood in the cage, replaying the argument you’d just had with Owen.  
“Don’t you dare babe me! I’m not staying here with your new fucking girlfriend while you and Barry take off with the girls.” You left out that the last time he’d told you to wait for him he’d nearly died and you weren’t up for that again, even if you were pissed off and hurt. “I’ve invested just as much time with them I have every right to go. How much do you think they’re going to trust you if you leave me here undefended?” He couldn’t be that narrow minded that he didn’t see that if he stuck you in the truck with Claire, Zach and Gray, the girls would notice. They would notice that their Alpha wasn’t letting his mate come along and they would see it as suspicious. For what reason would their pack leaders not join together to lead them, especially if Barry was coming.  
“I made a fucking mistake! You don’t think I know that?! How am I supposed to focus on this when I know that one mistake and you could end up dead? Just because they decided not to eat us this morning doesn’t mean they’ll decide the same thing as soon as they’re loose, there’s no god damn reason that you can’t stay here where it’s safer!”  
“Just like I was supposed to stay at home this morning and try to plan our wedding while you were off with Claire. When you thought I was being bitchy and blowing things out of proportion after I stood there watching you flirting with her like I wasn’t even there! Like I wasn’t standing there listening to you say those things to her and here we are now and would you look at that! Flirting with her in front of your fiancée turned in to kissing her in front of your fiancée. Or did you forget about that? Is she that much better than me that I don’t even exist to you when she’s around? If going with my girls means I end up dead then at this point I welcome it. Death would be a welcome sight after today and after everything you’ve put me through. You may have forgotten already, but I stood there and watched this thing tear through that paddock and I stood there while I thought it was killing you and I was ready to tear down this entire fucking island if it meant someone paid for that because I thought we meant something to each other. So don’t try to turn around and pay attention to me now because I’m going whether you like it or not.”  
You didn’t give him a chance to argue back, you didn’t look to see if what you said mattered to him at all. You went to the cage and you stayed there, went right back to ignoring Owen when he finally came back from giving his orders. The chain around your neck felt like it was burning you, laughing at you. You shook off the feeling and focused on staying on the opposite side of the small cage, looking over Charlie and Echo and glowering at the cameras that had been strapped to their heads. You weren’t sure whether or not you really cared if this stupid mission killed you or not, but you couldn’t take having something happened to the girls. If this was the last time you ever looked in to their eyes, the last time you ran your hand down Echo’s scar or traced the beautiful green pattern on Charlie’s skin. You choked back tears. This had to work, you couldn’t lose them too. The hand suddenly on your shoulder made you jump.  
“They’ll be okay, our girls can handle this. Just. Please don’t do something stupid because I’m an ass. Get through this and you can do whatever the hell you want to get back at me later. Just please don’t do anything stupid, I can’t watch you die.” He didn’t expect you to respond, he didn’t even need you to. But he needed to comfort you, he couldn’t stand there and watch you on the verge of tears and not do something. He couldn’t go in to this terrified that you’d get yourself killed because he’d been a shitty fiancé to you. When this was over and he could focus on making it better he would, but for now he needed to do what he could to make sure that you walked away from this. But fuck if he didn’t end up wishing that he hadn’t told you the girls would be okay.  
You started out amazed, the way the girls moved was beyond anything you’d ever imagined, anything you’d ever seen them do in the enclosure. You kept half expecting them to go in for the attack but they stayed on task, followed the scent until they finally stopped. Your blood felt like it was freezing in your veins, this could not be happening. The girls scattered, Indominus moved like it didn’t feel the bullets let alone the impact of the rocket launcher. Avoidance be damned, you weren’t leaving Owen’s side with the girls running rogue. You could hear the gunfire and the screams but even still you hoped to a higher power that the girls didn’t get hurt, that somehow they’d come back and it would be fine and like they were just joking with you. This was exactly what you’d all tried to warn Hoskins about, but he just wouldn’t listen.  
But there was Charlie, your sweet unpredictable baby. Owen had Blue, Barry had Delta and you had the last two but Charlie was your girl. You could guess what she’d been doing before she lifted her head from the grass and looked at the two of you but you didn’t care. One look told you that your girl was still there, that she hadn’t just flipped on you. You knew Owen could see it too. He had to, he wouldn’t lower the gun otherwise. A sudden flash of light and you were both thrown backwards, just like that Charlie was gone and smoldering grass was all that was there. Before you could do anything else Owen was dragging you off the ground and you were running, trying not to lose Owen with the tears blurring your vision.  
Blue looked much less happy to see the two of you. There was no meeting of your eyes and she remembered that you’d raised her, just claws and teeth chasing you, not following, just chasing. When she disappeared from sight you could only hope she wasn’t setting up for an ambush. The most likely answer was that they were going to the most familiar thing to them, and that put Claire and the boys sitting ducks right in their path. You caught up to them on the road, thankfully uneaten but the girls weren’t far behind and you needed to get indoors immediately.  
The park was thankfully deserted when you got there, and it was no surprise that InGen had already jumped ship. Now you just needed to get to the control room, you’d all be safe and everything would be fine. None of you anticipated passing the lab to realize that everything was gone, they’d taken everything they needed and left. They didn’t even care that you were there as they packed up the last of the embryos and left with them. You needed no real answer to understand what they were doing. The park was a lost cause, you can’t save something with an unstoppable killing machine running loose on it. But with those embryos, with all the research. It would be nothing for them to find new backers and start over again.  
You’d never considered that Indominus wasn’t an accident. Hiding from thermal, sensing heat signatures, camouflage. It had all been intentional, a test subject for a new weapon. They wouldn’t learn from this, they would just try making it smaller and do the same thing again and more people would die. They’d taken this mess of DNA from super predators and made something that couldn’t be stopped for the sake of having the best weapon. People had been killed by this thing, people had been killed in the quest to stop it. Hoskins didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t care how many of his men had been killed during his little field test, he didn’t care that one of his men had killed Charlie. He only cared about power, about thinking that he was smarter than everyone and that he held the solution to everything.  
Delta didn’t agree. Bad things happened when Delta didn’t agree and she was a very temperamental girl. Raptors remember, something Hoskins had forgotten. Delta remembered all the times he came around the paddock, upsetting her Alpha, upsetting his mate, upsetting the pack. She remembered the threats, the dishonesty in his eyes, how he always called them boys. She remembered that he had no respect for their pack, no respect for anything. She remembered his men strapping those devices to their head and expecting them to obey someone who wasn’t their Alpha. No one threatened her pack, her sisters. Easy boy. She would show him easy, just as soon as she took off that hand he dared hold out at her.  
You all made a break for it while Delta was distracted, but she didn’t stay distracted long as she barreled through the glass, effectively blocking your path to control. She got distracted again by the holoscape, giving you just enough time to run back outside, and right in to Blue. You should have been petrified, being surrounded again but you were just so drained. You couldn’t even be relieved that they were okay, Charlie should’ve been there. She should’ve been right behind you making sure that you had no exits. You waited as Owen dropped the gun and reached for Blue, waited for her to do just as Delta had with Hoskins and grab Owen by the hand.  
You saw in the reflection of her eyes what you had seen in Charlie’s. Recognition of their Alpha, recognition of the one who had protected them their entire life. You wondered if they knew that Charlie was dead, but there were more important things than agonizing about that again. Indominus had come, Blue turned back towards the group and for a moment you thought she might attack. You didn’t understand the range of vocalizations but if you had to guess she was telling their pseudo-alpha to go to hell. You nearly screamed when she was thrown into the wall. Delta and Echo leapt in to action with no more than a whistle from Owen. Claire and the boys ran and hid in one of the stands. Owen grabbed the gun back up and started firing while you ran for Blue. Every instinct in your body was telling you to hide but you needed to see if she was okay.  
When you saw Echo thrown onto one of the grills and go up in flames you couldn’t stop yourself. You heard the shattering of the amber replicas that Owen had been hiding behind as you ran for the restaurant. You had nearly reached its shelter when you felt the impact and were thrown off your feet. As you tried to turn yourself over you realized that what had hit you hadn’t been Indominus, but Delta as she’d been thrown. Indominus turned its attention back to what it really wanted. One human wasn’t enough for her, she went straight for the stand that Owen and the boys were taking shelter in. Behind her, the tail swung, leaving a new trail of destruction that left you now physically trapped in addition to being what felt like substantial injuries.  
That was when you heard the first roar, nearly covered by the screaming but echoing closer. You couldn’t see anything but Delta’s prone form laying near you but you’d know that roar anywhere. You still didn’t think it would be enough. Maybe it would buy the others time to get inside, to escape. But as you felt the blood seeping into your clothes you didn’t hold on to any hope of getting out. Even if anyone could get past the battling dinosaurs, they didn’t know you were there. They probably wouldn’t realize it until they go to control and realized you weren’t there and Owen would never forgive himself, you knew he wouldn’t.  
As much as it had killed you to see him kissing Claire, you knew he still loved you. But he trusted too deeply that you’d get yourself to safety and maybe you would have. If you hadn’t felt the need to check on Blue, if you hadn’t run to Echo even though you didn’t really think there was any way she’d survive being burned like that. If you’d used your common sense maybe you would be laying here trapped and probably bleeding to death. You tried not to think about how Owen would feel when he realized you weren’t there, when he realized that he’d left you outside. Would he be able to force himself to leave you there? You knew he wouldn’t, he’d tell the others to leave and he’d come look for you. But he would never forgive himself, not for this.  
By the time he found you it would be too late anyway, if you hadn’t bled out by then you probably would’ve been eaten. Pessimism pointing out there’d be nothing left for him to find but a bloodstain between two dead raptors. You weren’t even certain they were dead but you didn’t have much hope for anything anymore. You barely had enough left to think the others could get off the island, at least let those boys get home to their parents. You’d seen your entire pack wiped out today, your strange family that you and Owen had built together. Raised the girls from eggs and watched them grow from the tiny hatchlings that you held in your hands to beautiful girls that had died trying to protect you. You would join them soon enough and if there was anything decent left in the world Owen wouldn’t join you for a long time.  
As the sounds of battle started to fade, the end closing in, another noise erupted as you saw a familiar streak run past. Blue! You heard a shuffle next to you and turned your head enough to see Delta move. She wasn’t up, but she was alive! In the distance you heard water splashing and some sort of bellow before it grew silent save for heavy footsteps moving in to the distance. You could hear a lighter set approaching and Delta finally lifted her head to call out. Her call was answered and Blue came in to sight, she looked right at you before screeching and running back from where she’d come from. You could hear Delta shuffling around again and when you glanced back to her you were met with her face falling down next to yours.  
“Hey beautiful, you did so good today,” You rasped to her, each breath you took sending burning pain through your chest. “I’m so proud of you girls.” You heard noise again, this time you knew that it was Blue coming back but she brought company.  
It was done, Indominus was gone but so was just about everything else. Blue had run off into the dark, calling out to see if any of her sisters still lived. Owen would never see them again, he would get on that helicopter and leave this place knowing that. He wasn’t expecting her to come running back, screeching her head off. She circled him before shoving him in the direction she’d just come from. He followed, expecting that she was leading him to Delta. He would say goodbye but then he had to go. He needed to regroup with you, get you guys the hell off this island and start trying to figure out what he could do to make all of this up to you. He was worried about you enough as it was, he hadn’t seen you since Indominus had shown up and he was hoping you’d gotten in to control and away from this mess.  
Owen saw Delta first, her body half hidden past the debris. As he moved closer he would have sworn that his heart stopped beating in his chest. He all but flew over chunks of debris before he dropped down next to you, shoving pieces away from you as he did. He hadn’t noticed the blood yet, his eyes fixed solely on your face. He’d been that close to leaving you trapped there, not even realizing you were there. Blue was prompting Delta to get up and follow her but Delta was no more willing to leave your side than he was. His fingers traced the chain around your neck was no longer hidden by the over shirt you’d been wearing and the small sense of relief on his face disappeared when he finally noticed the blood. He didn’t realize what had caused it at first, just that he didn’t know how long you’d been here and that was more blood than he was comfortable seeing you wearing.  
“What the hell did I say to you before we left the paddock,” Owen forced out, shoving away any other debris that was still on you. He just had to stop the bleeding, if he could stop the bleeding everything would be fine, you would be fine. He just…he needed to have not realized where the bleeding was coming from and why Delta was staying so close to you. You weren’t bleeding from anything caused by the debris, the blood was coming from a gash in your side, one that was much too small to have been caused by Indominus. You’d been keeping pressure on it, using your shirt as a compress as well as you could which wasn’t very well given how much pain the rest of you was already in. You were getting weaker by the minute, you couldn’t even consider resisting when Owen pushed your hands away to reposition the shirt and keep the pressure himself.  
Don’t do anything stupid, I can’t watch you die. But now he would and as much as you wanted to see him again you cursed Blue for bringing him to you. She meant well, her instincts told her that in case of emergency find the alpha. The alpha would fix it, but Owen couldn’t fix this. You’d realized when Delta laid her head down next to you that she was trying to communicate more than comfort. You’d realized that when she’d been thrown Delta’s claws must’ve made enough contact to draw blood. You could see that Owen realized that now, that he realized that no matter what he said you probably weren’t leaving this island alive. You just wished that he wasn’t there to see it, surely finding your body would have been better than watching you die like this.  
“You should go,” You whispered “It’s okay, I’ll be with my girls. They’ll take good care of me, you don’t have to stay.” You’d already resigned yourself to this, there was no reason to make Owen suffer more. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you were supposed to be home in bed with him. Listening to his excitement at how well the training today had gone, falling asleep with your head on his chest exhausted from spending all night wrapped up in each other. You weren’t supposed to be lying here bleeding to death in front of him. It was funny that before today you’d never considered that you’d be separated from Owen by anything less than dying of old age. But you had faced the agony of thinking that he had been taken from you. At least that had been quick, off screen, you hadn’t had to watch.  
“They can’t have you!” Owen snapped “I can take care of you myself. The only place either of us are going is on that helicopter the hell out of here. You don’t get to leave me like this!” His yelling had attracted Claire and her nephews who were immediately ordered off to find a first aid kit, as if it would do anything but keep them from seeing this. “I can’t make you see how sorry I am if you aren’t here.”  
“I know you are baby, it’s okay.” He should at least know that, you couldn’t have him spending the rest of his life thinking that you hated him for one stupid mistake. “I know you didn’t mean it.”  
“Stop telling me that it’s okay! None of this is fucking okay!” It was breaking him, you could hear it in the way his voice cracked, the way he tried to mask it all over with anger. “Where the hell do you get off lying there and just giving up?! You can’t tell me that you were ready to tear the whole god damn island down for me when you thought they got me killed and then turn around and just fucking give up like this. You’re better than that, after everything we’ve been through today it doesn’t get to end like this. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. I am going to carry your sorry ass to that helicopter, you’re going to get fixed up and we’ll have our god damn happy ending but you are not giving up. Anything you want and I’ll give it to you. If you want to run off to Vegas and get married we’ll do it, if you want to get married at the top of a mountain fine. If you never want to see my face again after this then you never have to but you aren’t leaving me like this.”  
No amount of agony in the world had managed to break you to the point of tears. You didn’t want to contemplate how many broken bones you had from the weight of Delta hitting you, or the number of bruises. You had a gash in your side that you were slowly bleeding out from that Owen was desperate to keep from killing you. You’d seen a herd of animals you’d known since they’d hatched lie slaughtered in their grazing field and you’d watched two of your girls killed in front of you. You hadn’t shed not one tear since that afternoon. You’d been ready to give up more times than you wanted to count, you had been ready to now but something had snapped inside you. You couldn’t do this to him. You couldn’t lie there and make him watch you die, you couldn’t leave him to spend the rest of his life blaming himself for not keeping you safe, for hurting you when he was supposed to protect you, for not being good enough.  
You weren’t ready for this, for everything to end before anything had really even begun. You had come to this island for the opportunity of a lifetime. You had made friends, seen things that were beyond belief and worked with the most amazing animals to have ever lived on this earth. You had met this complete idiot and fallen madly in love with him. You couldn’t stop loving him even when he screwed everything up and you weren’t ready to leave him. This wasn’t over, it couldn’t be. You were going to come back from this. You were going to put on a white dress that made you look so gorgeous Owen would never be able to pick his jaw up off the floor when he saw you. You would promise each other all these things that really boiled down to something far simpler. I love you, I’ll never leave you. You would give him that real wedding he’d been pushing you for so hard. You would fight, you would do it for him.  
“I’ll always want to see your face,” You cried, trying to force yourself to sit up and realizing in the process that you had an audience. You were too weak to care, too weak to do anything but support yourself on Owen as he and Claire did their best to secure the makeshift bandages enough that moving you wouldn’t cause any more damage.  
All Owen had needed was just that one small sign, even a single word that you weren’t giving up on him just yet would have done. He could have done without you forcing more strain on your body but he had by some feat gotten some fight back in you. He had to hope that it would be enough, that you would still live. He couldn’t be sure one way or the other, just that if you weren’t willing to fight for yourself then there wasn’t any hope to be had.  
You didn’t remember falling asleep, or this stark white space and all this light. You remembered the dark, being lifted in to warm arms that felt like home. Your body felt numb, your mind was foggy and you weren’t sure where you were. You could feel cool metal around your neck, the weight of the engagement ring that had survived everything imaginable hung as a reminder against your chest. This wasn’t death, you weren’t sure what you expected of death but if you were dead you were expecting a greeting by some dinosaurs whose presence was sorely being missed. No, this was just an awful hospital room that couldn’t have been more beautiful save for one huge missing piece.  
“You’re awake.” There, there was that piece. You hadn’t even realized that you were hooked up to a heart monitor until you heard the beeping speed up. You couldn’t force your body to cooperate and call out to him. “Easy there, they’ve still got you pretty drugged up.” His voice came again, his face finally coming in to view in front of yours as he kissed your forehead. You wanted so badly to wrap your arms around him. “You know this might beat out how you made me feel the first time I ever saw you. God you scared the fucking hell out of me when you passed out and they took so fucking long with you before they’d tell me anything. She’s going to be sedated and heavily medicated because it’ll be easier on her when she does wake up. You believe that shit? I told them, my woman is tougher than anything you’ve ever seen. I watched her fight dinosaurs, I watched her lying on the ground beat to hell without complaining once about being in pain. Obviously they didn’t care or you’d probably be able to feel your face, or any other part of your body.”  
He was getting nervous, he always started going on like that when he got nervous. You could only imagine him waiting on doctors to give him any sort of update. Glancing down at your body as best you could with almost nonexistent mobility you could understand why they wanted you medicated. You couldn’t see under the hospital gown but you could see the bulk of bandages underneath. Your arm was in a sling, your leg in some sort of complex splint and you were sure there were far more bruises than what you could see at that moment. When the pain meds wore off it was going to hurt like hell, your only explanation for making it through before was that it must’ve been adrenaline and shock.  
You didn’t care if the meds wore off, you wanted them too. You wanted to feel his hand wrapped around yours, really feel it and not just this warm weight. You wanted to stop feeling like you were in a fog, so tired you thought you should go right back to sleep. You wanted your body to cooperate with your mind without so much effort.  
“Love, you.” You managed in a pitifully weak whisper. God how you wanted to sleep, but sleep meant you couldn’t see Owen.  
“I love you too. You can go back to sleep you know, I’m not going anywhere. More rest you get now, the better you’ll heal and the sooner they’ll let me take you out of here.” He could see the resistance in your eyes as clearly as he could see the fatigue. As much as Owen would love to just sit here and talk to you, he knew you still needed rest. He hadn’t even been expecting you to wake up so soon, he thought he’d have a little more time before you were up that he could use to try and figure out where to go from here. He didn’t have to wait long for your resistance to break and the combination of fatigue and lingering sedatives to draw you back to sleep. There was time, plenty of time. It felt like there was all the time in the world now to figure things out but at the same time your sleeping form was a clear reminder that it was not time to be wasted. Owen swore he’d never make that mistake again, he would cherish every second he could with you and hope to god that when the time came the two of you would go together.


End file.
